Icarus
by Lynyrd Lionheart
Summary: It takes exactly one kiss and five seconds for the world to fall apart.


**AN: One of two one-shots I wrote for tumblr user stuckindisney for Captain Swan Secret Survivor. She asked for a story where David died and Hook helps Emma with her grief. So warning: David dies. It was difficult to write.**

**Icarus**

It takes exactly one kiss and five seconds for the world to fall apart.

Regina presses her lips to Henry's forehead and they are all blasted with a halo of golden light. When it fades there is a brief moment of happiness – they've broken he curse, they'll finally get answers.

One kiss and six seconds before Snow falls to her knees with an agonized moan, clutching her stomach, and Emma feels panic that something is wrong with the baby, that something is wrong with her _mother_. But it's not the baby that has Snow falling, Snow sobbing. It's the memories.

The memories of casting the Dark Curse, using the heart of the thing she loved the most.

David.

They had all thought he had been turned into a flying monkey, had been so careful not to harm any of them, lest that monkey be David. Snow had been determined to end the witch, to get her husband back… only she can't. She can't because David is dead and she is the one who crushed his heart.

Emma hugs her mother close and pats her back, but she feels a disconnect. She loves her mother, she really does, but her mother killed her father, and Emma wishes bitterly that they had left her in New York. Maybe it was a fake life, but at least she wouldn't be feeling this gut-wrenching pain. This deep, deep mourning.

Emma has lost her father, and then she loses her rock, because Hook reveals that Zelena cursed him, and how can she trust him when he's been lying to her?

How can she trust Snow when she killed Emma's father?

How can she trust herself when she has been so very, very wrong about everyone around her?

Emma takes a step back. She holds Henry while silent tears run down his face, because he has his memories back, but no grandfather, and what kind of a mother is she, that she's put him in this world again?

"You'll have to come to terms with it," Regina says coolly, though Emma can see the pity in her eyes. Emma doesn't want her pity, or to hear Regina tell them to deal with it. This is _her_ sister, so why is it Emma's father who died to stop her?

"It's been five minutes," Emma responds, her voice cold as the arctic, and Regina takes a step back. They've butted heads before, but Emma has always been the hot tempered one in those battles, and so the Evil Queen isn't used to seeing the Saviour so very, very cold. "Maybe give us ten more."

So she gathers her mother and her son, and she leaves behind Regina and Killian, and she feels his gaze boring into her back, and wishes that she could turn around, could ask him to come with them. She is adrift and alone and hurting and she needs him, but she doesn't trust him, and she hates him for that.

She puts Snow to sleep, tears still falling down her face, and Henry curls up next to her, as though he and his grandmother can share strength until they're strong enough on their own. Emma sits and watches, and once they've fallen asleep, she allows her own tears to fall.

She'd had so short a time with David, with her _Dad_, but that time had taught her one thing – he was the parent she took after. As much as she loved Snow, David was the one that simply _got_ her. He was the rock of the family, and with him gone…

Emma feels so alone. The last time she had felt like this, Neal had died. Only then David and pulled her into his arms, and Emma had felt grounded, had felt as though she might be able to get past the grief. That won't happen this time. David is gone, and with him his strength. What do you do when the one with the strength is the one you're forced to mourn?

Snow sniffles in her sleep, and Henry moves closer, and Emma wants to scream. She wants to demand to know _why_. Why did she have to kill David? Didn't she realize how much they _needed_ him? How much it would destroy them?

She can't be here. She can't watch her mother and her son hold each other and sleep and mourn, not when she doesn't know how to handle this. Emma has known loss before, but not like this. Henry had still been alive, even if he was lost to her, and the grief for Neal had been strong, but it had been grief for a ghost she would never truly get the chance to overcome. But David?

She doesn't know how to grieve. Not like this.

Her feet carry her away from the loft and the memories it carries, and before she knows it, she's at the docks, and _he's_ standing at the edge, staring out over the sea. She thinks to turn away, to walk back to the loft, but his voice cuts across the distance and stops her.

"My mother died when I was a lad. It was disease. My father… my father enjoyed the wenches and he was never particularly discerning in which ones he shared a bed with. In the end, he survived, but it killed her, and he was never quite right after that."

"He didn't rip out her heart," Emma replies bitterly. "Maybe he screwed up, but at least he didn't do it purposely. They're supposed to be true love, but you don't kill someone you love, Hook."

"You do if it's to save someone you love more, Lass," Killian says simply, and Emma looks at him with confusion. He glances down and gives her a small smile. "Your sibling, Emma. Your parents would do anything, if it meant saving their child. After what happened to you…"

_Abandonment. Loss. Bitterness. Trust issues._

Take your pick, he doesn't have to say it out loud. Her parents would have gone to hell, if it meant keeping another child from going through it.

"How did you forgive him?" Emma asks at last. "Your father?"

"I didn't," Killian admits, and Emma has to appreciate his honesty, though she wonders somewhat bitterly where it had been when Zelena was cursing him. "I tried. I followed him and thought I could love him, because he was all I had left, with Liam in the navy. Then he left me with one of those doxies he so loved and I realized I didn't mourn him."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Emma asks, and she closes her eyes against the tears the threaten to fall. "I need you right now, but I can't… I don't… why?"

It's a desperate plea, and she feels Killian's hand hover over her shoulder for a moment, as though he wants to pull her into him, and she wishes he would. That, for just a second, she could lean against his strength. Just a second.

But then his hand moves away, and when he speaks it's with anguish.

"I didn't want to burden you. What she did… I thought I could take care of it. Or at the very least ensure it didn't affect you. But she threatened Henry and I… I would do anything to keep you from pain, lass, or the boy from harm."

_That's what you do, for the people you love_.

Emma thrust the thought away. David was dead, and Emma needed to figure out how to grieve. She didn't have time for a pirate and his emotions, or his fuck ups…

He lets out a small gasp, and it takes Emma a moment to realize that she's turned into him, that she's pressed her face into the leather of his jacket. It takes a moment for his arms to come around her, a moment for realization to set in, and then she's sobbing.

She's sobbing, and crying, and she doesn't know how to stop. When was the last time she'd cried like this? Graham's death? But no. She had been sad, she had cried, but it hadn't been like this. This was draining, as though she would cry out everything that was in her, until there was nothing left but an empty shell where Emma Swan had once existed.

He simply holds her. He doesn't whisper to her, or murmur soothing nothings as others would have. He simply runs his hand over her hair and lets her cry. She doesn't think he's even looking at her, thinks that he's likely looking out over the ocean, thinking of his own loss.

She appreciates it. She needs him – to hold her, to let her break – but she would hate it, if she knew he was watching her, and that he isn't…

She simply appreciates it.

"I'm going back to New York," she says at last, breaking away from him. "When this is done, when Zelena is dead" – and she would be dead. Emma is not Snow White, she will not forgive Zelena for making this necessary – "I'm taking Henry, and I'm going back to New York."

"I know, Lass," Killian says, voice soft, letting her leave his arms.

"I hate that I can't trust you right now," she says, hugging her arms around herself. "I hate that I can't trust my mother."

"I know," he repeats, and she closes her eyes when she hears the pain in his voice. God, how had she come to rely on him so much? To _need_ him so much.

"Will you come with us?" she asks, and this time she knows she's surprised him. She looks at him, and he's watching her solemnly.

"You'll be running," he says at last. "You'll be running, from facing your mother and from Dave's death."

They had been friends of a sort, Emma realizes as she stares at him. Hook and her father… she had noticed, of course, but it had never really crossed her mind until then, that he was likely hurting too.

"Yes," she says at last, because being honest is simply what they do with each other; it's the reason his hiding Zelena's curse _hurts_ so damn much. "Will you come anyway?"

He looks out at the ocean, stands at the pier and stares out, and she stands next to him, waiting for his answer.

"I've nowhere else to go," he says at last, and Emma nods. It's not an answer, not really.

But it will do.

**AN: And there it is. Let me know what you think.**


End file.
